Lucas Murphy 40 Miles of Fury at 2013 King of the Hammers

NORTH EASTON, MA FEBRUARY 27, 2013: Lucas Murphy designed a brand new car for the 2013 Griffin King of the Hammers. 2012 may have seemed like a quiet year for Murphy’s Law Motorsports, but they placed 3rd at the Ultra4 Rausche Creek Qualifying for KOH, built a new car, and built a toterhome and trailer setup. On the Johnson Valley lakebed this month, they qualified early on Tuesday keeping the car together and sat in the top 10 for most of the day finally settling at the 52nd starting position for Friday’s race. They only made it 40 miles in the King of the Hammers before they limped back to main pit with a transmission failure. “To win, you have to have a perfect day with a proven car. Our short 40 miles was awesome, and really we could have kept going forward, but we didn’t want to jeopardize anyone else’s race. It was pretty uneventful,” said car owner and driver of record Lucas Murphy.

Lucas Murphy and his whole team have been working hard to build a brand new car for the 2013 King of the Hammers. ”There is absolutely nothing old about this car. It has a mid engine, is about 6″ lower and is faster,” said Lucas Murphy. “It is built to be a race car not a trail rig racing.” They worked hard to make the car better out of the box, and proved that it was after putting 150 miles on it by Monday afternoon and only had to change a torque converter for one with a higher stall. “We were on the high line of the whoops passing people and we weren’t killing ourselves, thanks to FOX Shox. They have worked with us since the beginning on the build and it has really proven successful.”

While prepping the car for the main race after qualifying, they noticed that there was a crack in the brand new transmission tail housing. Taking precaution, they swapped in their old transmission. “Hind site is 20/20,” said Murphy. “We probably would have done better if we had left the cracked transmission in there. Our spare was from our old car, so we knew that it was used, but there was no telling that it would only last 40 miles. The one thing that we do know is the service side of this car is great because we can easily prep and change parts quickly. We could have changed the transmission in an hour or so had we been able to make it to a pit, but that wasn’t the case, so the transmission failure ended our race.”

The 3,200 mile drive from New England was much better this year in a custom built Kenworth toterhome that the Murphy’s Law Motorsports Team designed and built. “Our housing arrangements on Yukon Gear Blvd were much nicer than in a pickup truck and box trailer like the last 3 years! This year my wife and son came out it was really enjoyable.” The only catch was they only got 6.5 miles to the gallon fighting the westerly headwinds and used 200 gallons of fuel more than originally anticipated!

“King of the Hammers was good. We worked really had to make it fun, and it was,” said Murphy. “So now we are going to go to the next level and learn to build transmissions. We can build race cars and other components, why can’t we do transmission!”

In 2013, we will see Murphy’s Law Motorsports competing in the Ultra4 Eastern Regional series and at the Rausch Creek Race Series.

About Lucas Murphy:Lucas Murphy grew up in Martha’s Vineyard as the youngest of 9. At the ripe age of 10, he started working for his Father repairing boats and doing salvage work in the family yard of over 100 vehicles. He started welding at 14, and would complete engine, axle and transmission swaps without hesitation. He got into 4wheeling as soon as he could legally drive on the beaches of the Vineyard, but didn’t take a true wheeling trip until 2006 after meeting some people online. In 2008, he built his current rig from scratch and the day he got his rig running was the day before his son Tracy James (TJ) was born. Murphy’s Law Motorsports was started with wife Trish and co-driver Jon Hastie on board. They have since competed in the King of the Hammers consecutively since 2010, finished 4th overall in the 2010 Ultra4 International Endurance Series (IEC), RCRocks, Deep Woods Extreme Rock Crawl, Boulder Bash and various off-road trail rides. http://www.murphyslawmotorsports.com